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jfruh writes "Sam Muirhead, a New Zealand filmmaker living Berlin, will, on the 1st of August, begin an experiment in living an open source life for a year. But this is going way beyond just trading in his Mac for a Linux machine and Final Cut Pro for Novacut. He's also going to live in a house based on an open source design, and he notes that trying to develop and use some form of open source toilet paper will be an "interesting and possibly painful process.""

I just went full pirate back in 1999... starting with newsgroups and ftp's and migrated to torrents.

I use a Western digital wd tv live plus to stream movies on my tv off a shared drive on my network, got it on sale for 80 bucks.and wd tv feels like it was made for pirates by pirates as it works like vlc with any codec

started off with a laptop plugged to tv in the late 90's

and with rutorrent web front end to rtorrent i have the RSS scheduler programmed to automatically download all my favorite tv shows that

The turning in his grave part was moronic, but the implication was that RMS would hate anything he does being described as Open Source. He strongly opposes being thought of as a part of it, and insists that his movement is about liberated software. That's what the GP was alluding to, but spoilt it w/ the grave statement. Whenever he does any public event, he insists that he not be described as an Open Source advocate, and he refuses to be a part of Open Source campaigns that are described as such.

You forget. He is dead already, but came back to life to liberate all the softwares! He's the modern day messiah of computer software! He will return to his grave specifically to roll over in it because of statements like him being open source.

Indeed, I heard RMS has been using TP composed of shredded Windows 3.1 install floppies and printouts of the leaked Windows NT source for years now. Furthermore, his meals are all organically grown and fertilized by sewage covertly diverted from One Microsoft Way. You've gotta respect a man on a mission.

Some of those things mentioned in TFA aren't software, so I'm not sure the term "open source" even applies. H.264 is not software, but there is Free software that supports it. The issue regarding H.264 is freedom, because it is encumbered by software patents.

I really don't want to know is how one programs in toilet paper. Worse, visions of managers telling me I have to eat more taco bell because my... production... is too low. Oh, the puns, the humanity. -_-

More seriously, it would be more accurate to say that he is trying to live a lifestyle in which only products that are part of the public domain or the mechanisms by which it operates must be made available for inspection, and any changes documented and also similarly made available, without cost. Considering how I have even found 'patent pending' stamped on spoons and forks (really, I mean... really?)... I don't imagine he'll be able to survive the year. At least not without a lot of rationalizing and hair pulling.

But while the experiment will probably ultimately fail, it will at least show beyond any doubt how deeply corporations have penetrated into every faucet of daily living. It is simply not possible to live in modern society without giving the devil his due.

Well, a faucet attached to a pipe attached to a spray valve - how difficult is that, aside from having to roll one out oneself? There aren't too many moving parts in bidets, so that could be a solution for this one problem of his.

Of course it's virtually impossible to do this perfectly, it's like trying to live Biblically. Sure he's using a Linux computer, but that's only software. Are all the components open source? I doubt it. Similarly he's using a camcorder that tries to use as much open source as possible, but realistically it's not really kosher.

Why use toilet paper at all? Just wash yourself with soap and water. It's what a lot of folks in Asia do and it's just as hygienic (probably more so) than paper. The toilet would need to be open source too, which points to a composting toilet unless you fancy firing your own porcelain.

Where do we draw the line? A lot of things aren't exactly secret knowledge, but require a big company with money to manufacture. For instance, common steel nails have an ISO (or similar) standard size. If you wanted to you could make your own, the exact dimensions are publicly available, but it would take a hell of a long time. Power generation is another one, unless you build your own turbine, grid power is definitely closed source. Even then, batteries? Nuh-uh. But then, a lead acid battery isn't exactly complicated, so arguably one could draw up a schematic, it's just a matter of finding the chemicals.

I would be very interested in a repository of open source designs for home living, I'm not sure one exists. There are projects like Open Source Ecology that are trying to make a civilisation starter kit, but that's a bit low level. I want to be able to go to a database look for a design for, say, a four poster bed or a spoon.

This is exactly the point. One can know about a lot of things and how they are made, but that's different from actually being able to make them oneself. I think that a lot of people miss the point about open source entirely.

The idea behind open source in software is that if things break, one can study its innards, and modify it to fix the problem, once it's identified. It also makes a customer potentially less dependent on the survival of a vendor, and expands their choices of softwar

You need to get out of the basement more. Women don't want the finer things in life. They want the finer people in life. Most women I know who married a rich guy feel they married beneath them. They went through relationship after relationship, meeting asshole after asshole, and finally they decided that if they couldn't have someone who was intelligent, kind, humorous, and compassionate, they'd settle for getting knocked up by some rich guy... at least their kids will be provided for, and there's some chance of being loved in return then.

This guy is willing to take a year out of his life to experiment with art, to answer a question about existance and meaning. This is a guy who is confident enough in who he is and has a solid grasp of what he wants out of life. Unless he's a 4 bagger, odds are good someone will take him home... idealists tend to be compassionate and considerate, and will likely treat his woman with respect and kindness. Now all he needs is a job, a car that doesn't have the death rattle, and some living space... he'll have trouble keeping the girls away.

You need to get out of the basement more. Women don't want the finer things in life. They want the finer people in life. Most women I know who married a rich guy feel they married beneath them. They went through relationship after relationship, meeting asshole after asshole, and finally they decided that if they couldn't have someone who was intelligent, kind, humorous, and compassionate, they'd settle for getting knocked up by some rich guy... at least their kids will be provided for, and there's some chance of being loved in return then.

So, your evidence that women want finer guys and not rich ones is that the women you know who married rich guys claim that although they were totally selling out and marrying for money it is OK because all men are assholes anyway? Of course they feel they married beneath them. They chose to marry someone for economic reasons rather than the quality of the person. Or maybe you meant to say "Women want the finer people... but when it comes down to it, they would rather settle for the finer things and ratio

One is that women are actually people too (I know this seems to amaze many geeks) and as such are varied in their wants and desires. What one woman finds ideal may utterly repulse another. There is no one "What women want," standard. Were there, it would be well known. In all of human interaction there is no One True Way(tm) that makes everyone happy, so any time someone tells you they know what it is all women want, you know they are full of shit.

Another is that women (like all people) lie about what they want. Not just to others, but to themselves too. You will see a woman claim they want one thing in a relationship and yet seek out the exact opposite time and time again. That is no coincidence or happenstance, it is because what they claim they want and what they actually want are not the same thing. This is particularly problematic when they haven't analyzed it for themselves and are lying to themselves, so they aren't even really aware of what it is they are actually seeking out.

So just because a woman says "What I really want is a nice, caring guy," that doesn't mean that is what she actually wants. Also even if she does it doesn't mean that it is a particularly high priority. She may have other attributes she values more but doesn't say. For example she may like a nice caring guy but place a far lower value on that than having a guy who has a lot of money and an "alpha male" personality. She'd take it all if she can get it, but when it comes down to it she'll trade nice for the higher priorities.

Finally there is the problem of unrealistic expectations, which again all humans suffer from but research indicates with regards to relationships women suffer from it more. Women rate the majority of men as below average. That is of course statistically impossible so the real problem is one of perception. A great many women feel they are having to settle for someone who isn't as "good" as they are. They have unrealistic expectations, and and unrealistic assessment of what they bring to the table.

You can see this in online dating profiles where you will have someone who specifies a massive list of must and must nots for their potential partner, something that cuts the potential dating pool down to essentially nobody. Thus they either remain single complaining about how bad everyone is or they "settle" for someone "beneath them" since nobody can meet their unreasonably high and specific standards.

For that matter, "settling" is what you have to do. Nobody is perfect, you have to deal with another person's flaws. Dan Savage has a bunch of great things to say on this topic but one of the best is that there's no "the one" out there, no perfect person for you. There's just the 0.64 that you round up. You find someone you love and you pay the prices of admission, dealing with the things they do that aren't perfect for you, because the whole package is worth it.

An unfortunate reality is that women are biologically programmed to prefer "alpha male" types while they are in their prime childbearing years (puberty to maybe 25 or so).

The good news is that that tends to change when they reach their late 20s and 30s, when most women figure out that "alpha" types tend to be assholes who hurt them repeatedly, and that not all men are like that. On the contrary, "nice guy" types are able and willing, even eager, to provide the decency, kindness, nurturing, and protection a

There's a big problem here though. When they've hooked up with the "alpha male" assholes, they have kids with them. When they finally dump them in their 30s or so, and then want to be with the "nice guys", 1) many of the nice guys have already married other women, possibly not very attractive ones, because they "settled", 2) some of the nice guys have become angry and bitter after years of rejection, and aren't so nice any more, 3) many nice guys don't really want to take over as the father of some asshole's kids, and it's worse when there's shared custody and the asshole guy is constantly in the picture, and finally 4) now that the woman's in her 30s or 40s, she either can't or doesn't want to have any more kids.

So the nice guy is apparently expected to take over as father when the kids are entering their rebellious teenage years, devote all his time and money to raising some asshole's kids, and not have any of his own.

Well... I assume in most cases it means someone had an idea of how a baby should behave, but he couldn't make changes to existing babies, so thought it'd be a good idea to create his own baby, possibly much like many other babies out there, although different because he could make it behave the way he wanted it to. He had all kinds of grand ideas and greatly enjoyed the process of making the baby. But after it was made, he realized that it actually takes a lot of work to keep it running. The baby relies on

The missionary position is hardly protected by copyright or patent. Unless you choose to make your baby using some proprietary method for fertilzing an egg (artificial incemination? patented sex positions?) I think your baby can be considered open source.

No, that is 'Free women' or 'Free babies'. With Open Source women of babies, you needn't contribute anything upstream or downstream - you just need to make their sources available whenever you set them loose. (Somehow, I just don't see how that would work for spouses)

But open source has little to do w/ cost, and more to do w/ knowing how everything is made, and being able to make everything from common stuff that he can get freely, like sand, water, leaves, grass, et al. In short, his end product should be something that he'd have been capable of making himself from easily available parts, and not manufactured items, where automatically, a sense of 'closedness' would creep in. It may cost him a ton of cash to build, but it would be stuff that he built himself, as oppo

There isn't anything you cannot do with sufficient amounts of sand, water, leaves and grass. Why, you even could just declare leaves money, to hang out on the beach all day and just enjoy being rich (because when you're *that* filthy rich, you don't really have to pay for anything anyway, ever again; everybody will give you everything for free, in hopes of getting on your good side).

Please excuse me if this is a stupid question, but since when has toilet paper had source code?
I love open source software, and I've been a long time supporter of the movement, but I feel it weakens the open source software movement when you generalize it's meaning in such a way, because in order to change someone's mind, you need to have a clear and concise point!
But whatever I'll get back to selling jewelry made out of found items and shopping at whole foods.

The source code for commercially-produced toilet paper includes the instructions for how to use the machines, what feedstocks they require, and how to operate them. It is not referred to as such, but that's what it is.

I love open source software, and I've been a long time supporter of the movement, but I feel it weakens the open source software movement when you generalize it's meaning in such a way

Then you're going to hate knowing that the oldest reference for the use of "Open Source" in software [hyperlogos.org] is a press release by Caldera for OpenDOS, which considerably predates the "invention" of the term according to the OSI. Open Source doesn't mean what you think it means, it just means you can

What is objectionable about existing toilet paper from an "open source" point of view? Plain toilet paper isn't a creative work (specialty paper with artwork on it might be), so it can't be copyrighted. And patents only last about 20 years while toilet paper has been manufactured for much longer than that, so any patents on the manufacturing process or the paper itself would have expired some time ago. Shouldn't he be OK if he just buys a generic store brand without any fancy new features or copyrighted art on the package?

Of course any toilet paper brand name is likely to be covered by a trademark, but if that is enough to make it not "open source", then Firefox is not open source software either.

What I cringe about "open source" that it is used as some kind of synonym for something that makes everything automatically good. I bet that by large the biggest benefit of open source software is that it's usually free in cost.

I was not describing what open source is about. I was talking about throwing the term around like it is some "broccoli technology" which makes everything pure and holy if sprinkled around. When TFA was talking about open source jeans and open source toilet paper, it started to sound like that. That said, I think his "year with OSS" experiment is awesome.

Honestly depending where he lives, he might not have an issue. Local farms are a source of meat, if you talk to the farmers you can find out what they feed their stock (most of them are more than glad to answer actually). Lots of foods can be foraged (I make trips once a week to forage as a hobby) and during the summer it can yield several pounds of berries at a time. These get canned, preserved, or jellied. I grow a huge garden and what I can't eat immediately gets either dehydrated or canned. Public water here has its contents documented, so we'll consider that open source. I grow my own hops, and brew my own beer with them. Honestly after a good growing season, I'd feel comfortable saying that I could live around 70% off of foraged and homegrown foods. I could easily up it to 90-100% but my fiance would kill me for taking over the yard. Not that my case is the norm (and foraging is a weird, albiet fun and fulfilling hobby to get into), but if he is dedicating himself to it and preparing in advance I don't think it would be that difficult.

It's a lot more than that; plenty of non-GE crops are patented. For example, say you go to buy a Fuji apple. What could be more open source than that right? Not if it is a Gale Gala [acnursery.com], a patented bud sport of Fuji, or if he picks up a peach, it might be one of the many patented Flamin' Fury peaches. [sierragoldtrees.com] If he eats a carrot, it might have the patented line S-D813B [google.com] as a parent, or if he eats a pepper, it might be the patented hybrid 9942815 [google.com]. Lots of plants, not just genetically engineered ones, are patented, so avoiding every patented fruit, vegetable, grain, nut, oil crop, ect. and any food produced with them would be quite the challenge.

I don't know how things are in Germany, but I'd have to imagine they grow their share of patented crops there, and even if they didn't he'd have to watch out for anything imported from countries where those varieties are grown. You'd pretty much have to eat exclusively whole fruits and vegetables that you know the variety, or things where the varieties are very likely to be not under patent like lychee or persimmon, and maybe things that haven't had much breeding work done on them like kiwanos and jícamas.

No most crops are still non-gmo, well lab gmo. We've been modifying livestock and breeding plant species far beyond anything natural for centuries and playing with genes before we knew what genes where.

GMO is generally scary because it is done in a lab with white coats. The white coats apparently add the danger.

Nooo...its scary because no matter how hard we worked in centuries past we couldn't cross corn with a starfish, or fruit with squid and THAT is why GMO is scary, because frankly some of the shit they are coming up with can't even be truly classified as plant anymore.

Selective breeding = tinkering with parameters and settings.GM = changing part of the program binary.

Actually, it's quite fascinating, how flexible the genetic code is, because all dogs for instance share the same genetic code, the chihuahua has the same genes as the pitbull or the the scottish border collie. The only difference are the allels, the actual settings on the individual genes.

Grafting does not influence the genome or the genome settings. You could even argue, that the grafted plant is not a single individuum, but in fact two plants, or even more, if you graft more than one scion on the same stock. My parents once had a pear tree with at least five different scions. So grafting would be akin to have two (or more) copies of the same program with individual settings coupled together. I even have a setup like that running at a customer site, where a minimal Lotus Domino installation at one server works as connector between a non-IBM-software on the same computer and the real Domino server. The minimal Domino is grafted onto the original Domino installation.

I once spent 2 hours walking around with RMS looking for a restaurant that he liked AND served pepsi. This was in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, where most good restaurants have an exclusive deal with Coca Cola. In each place we entered, he asked if they served coke, and in a few places he insisted on speaking with the manager and when he got his way, he explained to him in gruesome details all the atrocities the Coca Cola company did in Colombia to workers.

I firmly believe in Free Software, and I admire RMS for everything he has done for the world. I try to uphold my principles, but this semi-religious thing of taking it to the extreme and avoiding anything even remotely related to something you disagree with, as if it was permanently tainted by immorality, is just plain stupid.

My company tries to free under the GPL as many products as possible, but if we freed certain things, we would be out of business. If I refused to use privative software at all, I couldn't even use a phone (even if the soft is free, the GSM firmware won't be).

What this guy is doing is just a publicity stunt, and a fairly stupid one at that. He thinks he's sending a message, but it's not the one he's thinking about.

I have to ask, did he do the same or did he ever do the same about Chiquita Banana's? There are far worse companies than Coca Cola, and at the top is Chiquita. Hell, the term Banana Republic comes from them and what they did taking over government in South America.

When I had a similar problem in China, the waiter went across the street to buy soda for us (in Beijing a lot of restaurants only serve soup, not something to drink). I don't know if a similar solution would have worked in your situation.

Stalin is right. Read his website, and what you have there is a member of the Loony Left. I myself endorse Open Source software of Eric Raymond and the OSI, where there are no misleading or deceptive terms used to describe the product, and where the real practical reasons for doing it are highlighted. The fact that Eric Raymond doesn't back wacko Leftist causes like boycott _____ (fill in 90% of the world's businesses in RMS' case) is another big plus as far as I am concerned.

I'm pretty sure this guy doesn't know what "open source" means. I'm pretty sure that the process to make TP is widely known (open source). However, the toilet probably has a couple patented items in it, so he will have to dispose of his own shit by himself. I'm pretty sure that there are laws that prevent that in most cities.

Toilets have been around long enough that you should by now be able to get one that is entirely public domain technology. I don't see this as an issue.

However I think he will have trouble with almost any technology. say goodbye to mobile phones, computers (I don't think there is any such thing as a fully open source hardware computer), probably stuck without many other things I haven't even thought of...

and he notes that trying to develop and use some form of open source toilet paper will be an "interesting and possibly painful process."

I'm completely in favour of free/open source software and related concepts wherever possible, but there is such a thing as taking it too far. Wherever the line is, demanding open source toilet paper is way over it.

Why? If he likes all the previous contributions to be passed to him, who are you to argue against his tastes?